1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to the fields of data interchange systems and data connectivity and integration and related software and methods.
2. Description of Related Art
Communication and connectivity between disparate entities has been a significant technical and financial challenge for the past thirty years. Over the years, electronic data interchange (“EDI”) formats and standards have emerged to communicate between data interchange systems of these disparate entities or sources in an effort to bring method and order to the process. For example, disparate entities often exchange documents that conform to EDI standards in efforts to streamline communication between the entities. Entities often buy software that provides the functionality needed to translate data to an EDI format for further processing at another computer system. Even with the development of EDI protocols, however, each implementation of these systems still often requires individual and customized work to adapt to each “node” in a communications network so that the entities can communicate effectively. This custom approach, however, is expensive, time-consuming and static (requiring modification as a result of each and every change).
Recently, various enhanced protocols and standards, such as XML and newer EDI standards, were developed to accommodate today's explosive e-business environment. Even so, there are still multiple standards, and there are nuances within almost every business entity and application so that effective data interchange between entities, sources, or applications still remains extremely expensive and time-consuming to implement.
For example, an administrator of at least one of these entities, sources, or application often manually performs various tasks required to prepare a data set or file for transfer and processing on another computer system which is often remote. Likewise, an administrator at the receiving computer system often performs many tasks to process the received data. The administrator, for example, can manipulate, copy, append, create, delete, or perform various other functions on files depending on the condition or requirements of the data or documents to be transferred or received. Also, the administrator can encrypt, compress, or translate the data to another format. Further, the administrator often maps data from one format to another and performs tasks to complete the transfer or receipt of a data set or file to and from another computer system. These administrators also often create scripts or instruction sets to assist them in performing various tasks. These functions by the administrator can be time consuming and expensive as complexities related to a plurality of different entities interfacing with one company have different data formats, standards, or protocols. These complexities often require teams of analysts at a customer, for example, and a team of analysts at a supplier or distributor to try to address the data connectivity issues between the entities.
More recently, software has emerged in attempts to address some of these problems. Applicants, however, recognize that many software companies are focusing only on the very expensive, top-tier implementations. They build software modules that “plug-in” between specific, popular commercial software applications, and have additional tools to address disparate communication environments. Although these companies can be somewhat successful in facilitating working environments, they can easily cost millions of dollars to implement, and take several months (to over a year) to complete. They require the services of trained systems integrators to manage and facilitate their installation.
For example, many conventional approaches for addressing disparate data interchange generally set a proposed solution on top of some existing data “standard” such as a particular version of EDI such as X12, some version of XML such as ebXML, or some other proprietary data format. Applicants recognize this as being problematic in that invariably entities wanting to connect electronically to another company often have to adopt that other entity's data “standard” whether it is convenient or not. Applicants recognize that this problem is like getting 12 people into a room, all of whom speak different languages, and trying to decide how to communicate with one another.